1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to networking technology and the communication of data.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the emergence of broadband technologies and the maturity of digital content, consumer adoption of digital music, images, video and other content has been growing. New technologies have been created to address how to distribute, store and access digital content. However, these new technologies have not kept pace with the needs of consumers.
Early attempts to provide services to those interested in digital music relied on a model that included a central point to store and serve audio files. However, consumers have shown resistance to storing all of their data on a central server. Alternatively, many consumers have utilized peer-to-peer systems, such as Napster, which store content in a distributed fashion among various user computers. One shortcoming of the existing peer-to-peer systems is the lack of security. A consumer who exposes its content to the network, must do so for all to access. The issues faced by the digital music industry are also relevant to other digital content.
Additionally, the use of content is restrained by the inability to access the content from more than one device. Each device receives its content from a different source, such as a Cable TV system or the Internet. Because these devices are unable to communicate with each other, the consumer is not able to listen or view media when not in direct contact with the device receiving or storing the content. For example, a PDA is currently incapable of accessing TV programming from a cable TV subscription. As a result, content providers miss out on an opportunity to provide media to a consumer who desires it and is willing to pay for it.